


Person Unknown

by Margo_Kim



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Angst, Background Het, Bittersweet, Character Study, F/M, Family, Family Drama, Gen, Minor Character Death, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-24
Updated: 2012-03-24
Packaged: 2017-11-03 18:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dead man with a familiar face and no identification on him turns up in the early morning. Sam lets Ruth Tyler decide what should be done with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Person Unknown

The call roused Sam from his uneasy dreams so suddenly that the phone was in his hand before he woke. It was Gene and it was three in the morning and Sam didn’t need to be told what that meant. Gene told him anyway. “We got a body. Stay where you are. I’m coming for you.” Then he hung up before Sam could yawn a reply.

Sam got dressed and perched on his bed, waiting to wake up. When Gene knocked, Sam shook himself and they left together to the Cortina idling on the curb. Gene didn’t speak to Sam as they drove. Sam, feeling too tired himself to pry out conversation, leaned against the window and watched the streetlights streak in the early morning dark as they sped by.

They stopped down the road from an alleyway, the street blocked off on both sides by tired-looking officers, sleeping on their feet. Annie puttered up at the same time in her beat-up yellow Volkswagen. Her hair was flatter than normal, her cheeks and lips paler, but her eyes were as bright as the light from the torch she carried. She and Sam nodded a _hello, how are you, are you utterly knackered too?_ as they trudged towards the police tape. Annie slowed. Sam followed suit. Gene kept up the pace and when he was five steps ahead, Annie pecked Sam’s cheek.

“Just us?” she asked.

Sam held up the police tape for her. “We’re the only people Gene wants to drag out of bed, I suppose. It’s very flattering.”

Annie yawned. “Some nights, I’d rather be ignored.”

Gene thrust his hand out before they could enter the alley. He pointed at the PCs keeping watch and jerked his thumb away. “Out.” They got out. Then Gene stepped aside and Sam walked forward towards the point of the morning.

“Robbery gone wrong?” he asked as he approached the body—a man, about Sam’s height, face down in a puddle of his own blood. Gene smacked Sam on the arm and held out the blue gloves of the forensics teams. Sam frowned as he snapped them on. “Didn’t know you cared about preserving evidence, Guv.”

“Thought we could do it your way for once.” Gene nodded at the body. “Look.”

Sam caught Annie’s eyes as he walked over. _Do you know what’s going on?_ his eyes asked. _I was hoping you could tell me_ , her shoulders responded. Sam knelt by the face-down corpse. “He didn’t die immediately. There’s too much blood smeared around. He had time to flail. Stabbed here.” Sam pointed. “And here. Might have been a surprise attack. The killer looked through his pockets. Took his wallet or looked for one at least. Look, he’s got a watch tan, but no watch. The killer could have taken that too.”

Gene was silent. Sam twisted to face him. ”Are you alright?”

“One of our boys recognized our nameless bugger,” Gene said. “Thinks he did anyway, but he can't be sure. It was the lad’s first body. Doyle out there says the boy’s still shaking. Thought you could help the lad out.”

Sam looked back down at the flesh beneath him. “Someone I know?” Here, even after a year, it was a short list.

“Just look.”

With the tips of his gloved fingers, he gently peeled the man’s face away from the pavement. Sam looked. And he looked. And he looked. And then he stood and faced Gene and Annie. “The victim’s taken a lot of damage. I can’t say,” Sam said. He paused, looked back for once last time at the body broken on the pavement. “I don’t know him.”

Gene nodded. “Then we'll get someone who can.”

***

Ruth Tyler looked like her pictures in those albums that had decorated Sam’s earliest homes. She’d been so beautiful then. Now. Before a lifetime of raising her son—her albatross, millstone, and raison d’être—alone, she looked just like a woman and Sam couldn’t meet her judging eyes. Annie spoke for him. “We found a robbery victim early this morning, Mrs. Tyler. He was fatally injured in the attack. We think it might by your husband.”

Ruth stood still as a statue then. She looked like something that belonged behind glass named with a plaque. “A Mother, Alone,” or “Shock in Repose.” Beautiful and fragile, like one more hard knock would shatter her. She braced herself against the doorframe and found her words. “Are you sure?”

“That’s why we need you, ma’am,” Annie said kindly. Sam shifted. He was always uncomfortable when his girlfriend chatted with his mum, even if neither knew that was what they were. They drove back to the station in near silence. Ruth sat in the back and stared out the window. Sam watched her in the rearview mirror. Annie watched Sam. “Where’s your son?” she asked to break the silence.

“With my sister. This isn’t the sort of thing Sammy needs to see.” Ruth caught Sam’s eyes in the mirror as she said this. They both looked away at the same time.

***

The morgue was empty, waiting for them. Oswald had scrubbed the clotted blood off the body and replaced it with a thin white sheet. With no fanfare, Sam drew sheet back. Annie stayed against the back wall, hands clasped in front of her, as Ruth stepped forward. Like Sam, she stared at the face below her not with recognition but resignation.

“Miss Cartwright, would you mind stepping out?” Ruth said. “I’d like a moment alone.”

Annie straightened. “Of course. We’ll just be—“

“Oh, Detective Tyler can stay.” Ruth’s smile was wan, and it made Sam’s gut lurch. “He’s practically family.”

Annie opened her mouth, caught Sam’s eye. She cocked an eyebrow, _do you know what you’re doing?_ painted across her face. Sam shrugged helplessly. Annie didn’t look comforted, but she smiled at Ruth and stepped away. “I’ll be outside if you need me,” she said and looked at Sam. He nodded.

The door closed behind her with a gentle click. The sickly yellow lights buzzed like flies. It made Sam’s skin crawl, made him roll his shoulders and shift from foot to while Ruth stared silently down at the body. When she spoke, she did so without looking at him. “It was a mugging?”

“We have a suspect in custody already. Archie Smith, twenty years old, unemployed. Just a kid looking for easy cash. He says he pulled the knife to scare the victim, but the victim fought back and he panicked. A witness identified Smith fleeing the scene, we pulled Smith in, and Smith confessed.”

Ruth didn’t move as Sam spoke. She barely moved when she did. “And his wallet?”

“Chucked into the canal. The boy doesn’t remember where, doesn’t remember seeing any ID, doesn’t remember anything that can pinpoint this man’s identity.” Sam swallowed. “He didn’t know the victim at all. Picked him at random.”

“He panicked.” Ruth tasted the words.

“Yes.”

“Poor sod.”

“Which one?” Sam asked.

She considered him. “Both, I suppose. Two lives lost for the price of one.” Ruth reached for the body but flinched away. She drew her hand back and curled it against her chest. “I remember you. You made quite an impact. I half-expected you to have some new alibi this time.”

“I’m just Sam.”

“My husband warned me about you. He said you thought you were our Sam.”

“Did he?”

“Do you?”

Sam laughed because that sounded casual, didn’t it? The sound bounced off the walls and echoed as Ruth waited for an answer. “That’d be mad.”

“You seemed mad.” Which was true. Hurt to hear. But true. “Less so now. But it’s been a year since the last time I saw you. Maybe you’re just better at hiding it.”

“I’m more experienced working with it.”

“Your madness.”

“My quirks.”

Ruth peered at his face. “I really can’t trust you at all,” she said softly. “You’ve got my husband’s eyes. He was always such a good liar.” She retreated, arms crossed in front of her, half stern and half lost.

When she looked back, she looked like his Ruth again. His mum. “Sammy doesn’t know what happened to his dad.”

There was a hint of a question in her voice. Sam answered. “No.”

Ruth stepped towards Sam. “He doesn’t know what his dad did.”

“No,” Sam said again.

“And if Vic Tyler were to show up dead, would my son find out what he did?”

“There is that chance. The papers, the police. The city’s full of people who talk.”

Ruth nodded, more to herself than Sam. “Is there anything wrong with giving a little boy hope?” She was hugging herself now, her hands gripping her upper arms until the knuckles went white. “Is it, Detective Tyler? I need to know.”

Sam stepped towards her, arms out. Ruth stepped back. His arms dropped to his sides and into his pockets, balled into nervous fists. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say here.”

Ruth smiled weakly. “Me neither.” She crossed over to the body once more. Her hand raised and lowered and raised again until she took a deep breath, reached out, and ran her finger down the line of his nose. Her hand slid and curled around his cheek. She ran a thumb over his mouth. “I don’t know him.” Then louder, “I don’t know him.” She pinched the sheet and tugged it up. As the white cloth fluttered back into place, she murmured, “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, Detective.”Before Sam could say it was alright, it was always alright, Ruth was backing away from the body, shaking her head. Sam ducked his head and stepped aside to let her pass. As Ruth passed, she paused. She looked up at him (“You’re so tall, Sammy! Look at you now.”) and studied his face. “You really do have his eyes,” she said quietly.

Sam tried to look away, opened his mouth to say something undeniably reasonable when she reached up and cupped his cheek. So instead, he closed his mouth and leaned into her hand, as familiar as his own.

“What are you?” she asked.

He smiled wanly and shrugged once more. “I’m just a detective, Mrs. Tyler.”

She drew her hand back. He didn’t touch his cheek.

“I imagine I won’t see you again,” Ruth said. Not a question. Not a statement. Closer to an order.

“No.” Sam blinked and swallowed. “No. We’re done.”

She nodded, and her eyes were bright and Sam wanted to guess at what caused it, but he knew that he would be wrong. He had known Ruth the mother. Ruth the woman would always be an enigma. The woman in question nodded politely at him and then she was gone, out the heavy morgue door that separated the living from the dead. Sam straightened the sheet that lay crooked across the body. Clever, silent Annie, summoned as always by need, put her hand between his shoulder blades. “It’s done then?”

“Person unknown,” Sam said. “No one claimed him.”

Annie nodded without a word so Sam turned and kissed her there in the chill of the morgue. She was inescapably warm against him, and she held him tight until it was time to let go.

***

Gene waved the paperwork through. For someone who hated doing it, he had a knack for getting it done. The requests for fingerprints and dental work quietly disappeared, and the body shipped out, heading for an unmarked grave or an open furnace and a stainless steel box. Sam didn’t care to find out. Their killer signed everything he needed to sign, and Gene whipped them out to the pub by five.

Sam ducked out of the ritual celebration of a day finished. He went to the flat alone and sat on the edge of his bed, his shoes still on but his shirt unbuttoned, halfway through shedding the weight of his day. Annie’d invited him home with a careful smile and gentle hand, and Sam couldn’t think of anything that sounded nicer, but not tonight. Tomorrow he’d buy her flowers just because and kiss her in front of the station, to hell with those jeering bastards. Tomorrow they’d strip each other bare and crawl into bed to poke at each other’s old wounds. Tomorrow. Tonight he fell backwards and landed in his bed with a groan, his arms outstretched like a kid in the snow. He stared at the ceiling and waited for the inevitable tears. He waited so long eventually he fell asleep.


End file.
